Italian Poetry

Today we read Sventatezza, by Antonia Pozzi.

War would seem to be mentioned only offhand in this bittersweet poem about a daughter’s memory of a hike with her father, when she was still a young child.

But the two landmarks evoked here, the Montello Hill and the Piave River, were the setting of some of the worst fighting endured by Italy during War World I.

Her father is telling her about it from a “nook” in the ground (that is, a trench), where the grass is sharp, and the roots are still drinking drops of blood.

But the little girl is impatient, her legs are restless, itching for a run. All she wants to do is sprint out and gather some blackberries, carefree.

The original:

Ricordo un pomeriggio di settembre,
sul Montello. Io, ancora una bambina,
col trecciolino smilzo ed un prurito
di pazze corse su per le ginocchia.
Mio padre, rannicchiato dentro un andito
scavato in un rialzo del terreno,
mi additava attraverso una fessura
il Piave e le colline; mi parlava
della guerra, di sé, dei suoi soldati.
Nell’ombra, l’erba gelida e affilata
mi sfiorava i polpacci: sotto terra,
le radici succhiavan forse ancora
qualche goccia di sangue. Ma io ardevo
dal desiderio di scattare fuori,
nell’invadente sole, per raccogliere
un pugnetto di more da una siepe.\ The music in this episode is Domenico Scarlatti’s Keyboard Sonata in D minor, K.32, recorded by Sylvia Marlowe (in the public domain).